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Back Deception Cove Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-One
  48. Forty-Two
  49. Forty-Three
  50. Forty-Four
  51. Forty-Five
  52. Forty-Six
  53. Forty-Seven
  54. Forty-Eight
  55. Forty-Nine
  56. Fifty
  57. Fifty-One
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Fifty-Seven
  64. Fifty-Eight
  65. Fifty-Nine
  66. Sixty
  67. Sixty-One
  68. Sixty-Two
  69. Sixty-Three
  70. Sixty-Four
  71. Sixty-Five
  72. Sixty-Six
  73. Sixty-Seven
  74. Sixty-Eight
  75. Acknowledgments
  76. Discover More
  77. About the Author
  78. Also by Owen Laukkanen

He set his head back and looked out at the night, and felt the first raindrops on his face, blown into the cave by the ever-building wind. The storm was coming; it was almost here. He wondered how they’d be able to sleep through it.

Jess’s voice in the darkness: “Mason?”

He looked toward her. “Yeah?”

“Are you just going to sit there all night?”

He tried to find her in the dark, but he couldn’t, and he couldn’t see the forest outside the cave, either. The wind blew harder, and the rain came faster. His muscles ached from sitting like he was, and he realized suddenly he was tired, very tired.

No,” he said, shifting his weight, crawling to where he’d last heard her voice. “No, I guess not.”

He found the dry clothes and felt her warmth beside him, and he lay close to her and felt her move closer, heard the dog snoring somewhere deeper in the cave, and he closed his eyes and tried to forget the storm for a short while, tried to rest.

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Three

Later, after the rain had come on in earnest, blowing into the cave and through the shot-up, ruined skiff Mason and Jess had mounted at the entrance in a vain attempt to make a weather door, after Mason had lain awake, dog tired, on the rock beside Jess, the darkness the same whether his eyes were open or closed, his thoughts refusing to quit even though his body was about finished; later, after what might have been minutes, or it might have been hours, Jess rolled over onto her back beside him and spoke like she knew he was awake, like she couldn’t sleep either.

“Her name was Afia,” she said. He didn’t say anything, and she continued. “My interpreter, in the valley. Afia; she was a young widow who’d learned English after her husband died. The marines hired her to work as an interpreter, and they placed her with me.”

“Afia,” Mason said, thinking it was a pretty name, knowing from the way Jess struggled to keep her voice matter-of-fact that Afia was at the heart of what it was Jess was wrestling with.

“She was pretty well my best friend over there,” Jess continued. “We were about the same age, in an outpost full of men, so we had to stick together. She practiced her English reading old Archie comics; she told me I was Betty and she was Jughead.”

“Jughead.” Mason smiled. “The guy who ate all the hamburgers?”

“She liked food more than she liked falling in love, she said.” He could tell Jess was smiling too. “But that didn’t stop her from asking about me and Ty, or pointing out the hot guys at the outpost, to tease me. Me and Ty were already having trouble, and Afia didn’t think so highly of him, based on the stories I told.”